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Review: Valkyria Chronicles is the year’s sleeper hit

One of the rare PS3-exclusive RPGs, Valkyria Chronicles is the sure-fire …

The strategy RPG sub-genre has remained more or less the same since the early SNES days; aside from the Disgaea series, few games have really mixed up the core mechanics of the SRPG genre. That's why Valkyria Chronicles, Sega's new PS3-exclusive SRPG, is so exciting: it finally mixes things up for the better. While it may still pay tribute to the genre's roots, Valkyria is one of the most exciting SPRGs in quite some time, just because it's so drastically different than the norm.

The definitive feature of the title is the BLiTZ battle system. Rather than managing and moving your individual units on the familiar square grid, Valkyria turns the on-foot gameplay into a third-person shooter. You're free to move about the map, take cover, lie down in grass, flank enemies using the environment... it can feel like a normal shooter. A number of restrictions—including how far a given unit can move and how many units you can order around during a single turn—are put in place to keep the game strategical, but Valkyria feels undoubtedly more exciting than the average SPRG.

For SPRG fans who think they've seen it all, this is a welcome innovation. The newfound degree of mobility and environmental interaction adds a previously unseen dynamic to a well-worn genre. In fact, at times the game feels more like an action game than an SRPG—to the point where shooter fans could wind up getting sucked in. Pushing your characters up behind a tank to use it as mobile cover while assaulting a front, creating ambushes in narrow alleys, hiding snipers in tall grass—all of this is possible and much more. Few SRPGs feel as fluid and dynamic as Valkyria.

That said, the staple RPG fixings play a key role in the overall experience. You'll be able to create your own squad of units drawing from a pool of different classes, and you'll be able to research and upgrade equipment as well as customize your forward-command tank through various upgrade trees that allow specialization and individualization of units.

New characters can also be recruited to aid in battle if others die as characters that die in battle are gone forever. Each character in Valkyria is made unique by a few different and important factors. Each character has an affinity to other characters, which changes the way a character performs relative to surrounding units, and a number of personality traits and quirks and special moves. A "Chatty Cathy," for example, will have a natural decrease in accuracy while positioned near friends while an "City Kid" will gain attack bonuses when in a city setting. These quirks greatly imbue the game with additional meta-strategy which makes properly creating and managing your squad before you hit the battlefield an important element of gameplay.

Valkyria does mix up successfully the standards in these RPG elements, too. For example, instead of leveling up individual units, you'll level up the entire roster of a single class. After battle, experience points are pooled and can then be used like currency to buy unit training. Spending a certain amount on scouts, for example, will level up all the scouts in your army, whether the individual soldiers of that class participated in battle or not. This is a welcome change from the norm as it completely eliminates leveling discrepancies. There is no need to worry about replaying weak battles over and over just so that your weaker characters or new recruits can catch up to the stronger ones.

Amidst all the innovations and slight changes, though, you can also expect the staple lengthy narrative with plenty of cut-scenes. Though the story is, for the most part, full of the normal melodrama and anime-like vibe befitting of a Japanese-born RPG, the interface is a welcome change of pace. The chaptered storybook interface that the game uses separates the cutscenes and battle sequences as "episodes" is a welcome change, as it makes it easy to jump into and out of the game as, at any time, you can turn back the pages and re-watch the story sequences, view optional sub-episodes, replay old levels, manage your team, or play off-shoot skirmishes for experience and money.

The story itself centers around small-town folk thrust into a war of worldly proportions. In an alternate view of World War I playing out in a fictitious though familiar setting, the game's two main characters, Welkin and Alicia, are quickly thrust into battle as a brooding empire invades their once-peaceful homeland. There are even parallels to the oil crisis as the central point of war is a substance called "ragnite" which is key to civilization. The transformation from hometown life to warfare, and from ignorant bliss to rude awakening, is well-represented.

Unlike most "world war" games, though, Valkyria is decidedly lighter. As the art style suggests, this isn't a disparaging, dark and depressing depiction of war but rather one designed to focus more on the people and the effect war has on character than on the reality of war; it's very anime-like. To that end, the cel-shading graphics makes sense: the presentation isn't there for any frivolous reason or just solely because it looks pretty, though it most certainly does. It's there to alleviate the focus on bloodshed and the grim reality of war to concentrate more on the people than the war itself.

Sega has returned in fine form with Valkyria Chronicles. Not only is the game's story wholly enjoyable and the presentation is gorgeous, but the game itself is well-made, innovative, and entirely fun to play. Sure, the controls can be clumsy at times and many of the missions are excruciatingly unforgiving, but these issues don't detract greatly from the refreshing experience. This is the sleeper hit for 2008; don't let it pass you by.